School of Economic Sciences - Washington State University

a trade mission with GDP smaller than Turkey’s.Japan is the most frequent destination for governor-led trade missions. It is visited 67 timesfrom 1997–2006.Other frequent destinations are China (45), Mexico (39), Germany (37), andTaiwan (31). Though Japan is the most frequent destination, China holds the record for most tripsin a single year: 11 in 2005. Japan is next with ten in 2005. The most frequent state-country tripis Virginia to Germany which occurs five times over the ten years. Also, Tennessee to Japan andOregon to Japan occurs five times.Visited countries tend to be larger than non-visited countries, however visited countries growless quickly. The correlation between 1997 GDP of the destination and the total number of tripsthere between 1997 and 2006 is 0.82. Compare this to 0.46 which is the correlation of 1997 GDPwith total exports to the country, or 0.44 which is the correlation between 1997 GDP and the totalnumber of states exporting to the country pooled across panels. The correlation between the totalnumber of trips and the average GDP growth rate is -0.10. This is similar to the correlation of thenumber of exporting states with the average GDP growth rate.Virginia took the most trips, visiting foreign destinations 31 times in ten years. Other stateswith a large number of trips are Wisconsin (30), Nebraska (23), and Ohio (21). The governorsof Connecticut, Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming did not travel to any country on a trademission. The average state has 10.08 trade missions from 1997–2006. The most missions per yearis by Wisconsin. In 1997 the governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson, went on 12 trade missions.The average number of trips per year is 2.4 for states with at least one trade mission during 1997to 2006.States with the most missions tend to be slightly larger in terms of their total value of manufacturingshipments (TVS), although, as seen in figure 3, the relationship between size and thenumber of missions is not strong. The correlation between the total number of trade missions takenby states during 1997–2006 and their 1997 TVS is 0.22. It is -0.26 between trips and TVS growth.The correlation between TVS and missions is much less than the correlation of TVS with eitherstate exports (0.89) or the number of states exporting (0.78).Figures 2 and 3 provide a nice overview of the state trade mission data and of which countrieshost missions and which states travel frequently. They are incapable of showing any relationship16